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How to Succeed in Clinical Mentorships

Documentation of essential skills performed in the clinical mentorships is ourway of assuring that our students have been given a quality education, meetall the standards set for Purdue program graduates, and meet AVMA accreditation standards.

The function of the on-site mentor is to guide and encourage the student at the mentorship site. Mentors are responsible for documenting that tasks have been done the required number of times by the student, but only one performance of the task is submitted for evaluation.

There are some concepts that the student should keep in mind to facilitate evaluation and acceptance of mentorship tasks:

Is it helpful, but not necessary, to show the tasks in the order listed in the logbook.

Read through each task completely, before performing, to be sure that you understand the criteria.

Announce verbally or in print on videotapes exactly what task is being performed. Identify the task exactly as it is named in the logbook.

For projects and other materials submitted, make sure each item shows the exact title of the task.

Review videos of demonstrations of tasks from the didactic course in which a task was taught. This helps the student understand the criteria.

Watch your videotape before sending. Be sure that all criteria listed in the logbook are met, and that the viewer can see each other. When editing the video, be sure that no criteria is omitted.

Narrate all tasks as you perform them. Evaluators may not able to read labels, etc. and depend on the student to tell these things verbally.

It is acceptable to show attempts, goofs, or struggles as you perform tasks, as long as errors are corrected and the task is completed satisfactorily in the end. It's OK to be human!

Evaluators of submitted materials are program instructors at Purdue who also evaluate clinical skills of on-campus students.

It is not unusual for evaluators to request resubmission of some tasks in a mentorship. Materials submitted must document correct performance of each task. An Incomplete grade will be given until all tasks are completed to the satisfaction of the evaluators.